Word: grofe
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...Robinson Crusoe's Man Friday had left him, gone adventuring on his own, it would have upset 18th Century literature no more than jazzdom was upset last week when Ferde Grofe stepped forth in Manhattan as a conductor. For 13 years Ferde Grofe was Paul Whiteman's right-hand man. He made all the symphonicky arrangements which earned the Whiteman orchestra its serious regard. Expensive radio stars had a hand in last week's concert : enormous Vaughn De Leath, announced as the first voice to go on the air; fat Morton Downey who looked foolish singing "Kiss...
...novelty for Ferdinand Rudolph von Grofe to be performing in public. He used to play first viola in the Los Angeles Philharmonic beside his grandfather, a 'cellist, and his uncle who was concertmaster. Grofe's family in-tended him for business so at 14 he ran away, became an elevator operator, then a truckman, a milkman, a heaver in an iron foundry, a pressman in a bookbindery. When he composed a march for an Elks' Reunion in Los Angeles his family relented, let him go in for music...
...Ferde Grofe who for twelve years has worked for Jazz behind the scenes made one of his rare appearances last week out front. Ever since Jazz swept down the Barbary Coast, Ferde Grofe has been Paul Whiteman's Man Friday, anonymously scoring tunes, embroidering them until even some of the sleaziest have taken on symphonic richness. Last week in Chicago a great crowd gave him longaccumulated credit. Paul Whiteman played Ferde Grofe's Five Pictures of the Grand Canyon and the audience shouted approval of a smoothly syncopated sunrise and sunset, a thunderous, climactic canyon storm...
...with a string quartet, he worked in Tait's restaurant in San Francisco, was fired for not knowing jazz. He started a band of his own, borrowed money enough to take his men east where he got a job in the Ambassador Hotel, Atlantic City. His pianist, Ferdie Grofe, a brilliant technical musician, helped him greatly toward fame by his skilful arrangements of current songs. Whiteman himself can tell little about a composition from reading it; he puts in most of his own touches in re hearsal. Famed in the trade for his busi ness acumen, he hires...
...There is no doubt in my mind that American jazz is a distinct international idiom, and that the work of such geniuses as George Gershwin and Ferde Grofe will establish this fact," said Paul Whiteman to a CRIMSON reporter yesterday, in his suite in Symphony Hall...